Promises I Can Keep: Why Poor Women Put Motherhood Before Marriage
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Millie Acevedo bore her starting time child before the age of 16 and dropped out of high school to care for her newborn. Now 27, she is the unmarried mother of three and is raising her kids in one of Philadelphia'south poorest neighborhoods. Would she and her children be better off if she had waited to take them and had married their father first? Why practice so many poor American youth like Millie go along to have children earlier they can afford to accept intendance of them?
Over a span of v years, sociologists Kathryn Edin and Maria Kefalas talked in-depth with 162 low-income single moms similar Millie to learn how they think about wedlock and family. Promises I Can Keep offers an intimate await at what marriage and motherhood hateful to these women and provides the most extensive on-the-basis report to date of why they put children before matrimony despite the daunting challenges they know prevarication ahead.
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Reviews
"Thankfully, someone has now taken the trouble to ask poor mothers themselves what'due south going on. . . . The experts have their theories, just the just real experts are the mothers themselves, and it's refreshing to hear from them for a alter."—American Prospect
"For all the blathering well-nigh family unit values, few people take actually taken the time to talk to these women. Sociologists Kathryn Edin and Maria Kefalas did, and the answers are startling."—Bitch: Feminist Response To Pop Culture
"Cogent and persuasive."—Library Journal
"The pair's refreshingly original results tin can exist found in an essential new book, Promises I Can Keep. Unlike previous explanations for marriageless parenting that seemed and then obviously off the marking, Edin and Kefalas' work is a revelation."—Celeste Fremon Ms Magazine
"In the end, the strength of Promises is that Edin and Kefalas accept given disenfranchised young unmarried mothers a chance to tell what it's similar to be one of them. A careful reading of the volume should make policymakers scrap many of their "spousal relationship incentives." If they're serious near improving the lives of poor children and families, they will focus instead on boosting opportunities in communities where having a baby without sufficient means of support or a husband, makes all the sense in the world."—The Crisis
"Ms. Edin and Ms. Kefalas decisively rescue the immature welfare mother from the policy wonks and feminist professors who take held her hostage until recently, and in so doing overthrow decades of conventional wisdom."—Wall Street Journal
"This is the most important study ever written on motherhood and wedlock amidst low-income urban women. Edin and Kefalas's timely, engaging, and well-written book is a careful ethnographic study that paints an indelible portrait of family life in poor communities and, in the process, provides incredible insights on the explosion of female parent-only families within these communities."—William Julius Wilson, author of The Bridge over the Racial Divide
"This volume provides the most insightful and comprehensive account I take read of the reasons why many low-income women postpone marriage but don't postpone childbearing. Edin and Kefalas do an excellent task of illuminating the changing meaning of marriage in American society."—Andrew Cherlin, author of Public and Individual Families
"Edin and Kefalas provide an original and convincing argument for why low-income women continue to embrace motherhood while postponing and raising the bar on wedlock. This book is a must read for students of the family besides as for policy makers and practitioners who hope to rebuild marriage in low-income communities."—Sara McLanahan, author of Growing Up with a Unmarried Parent
"Promises I Can Keep is the best kind of exploration: honest, incisive and ever-so-original. It'll brand you squirm, and that's a good thing, peculiarly since Edin and Kefalas endeavour to make sense of the biggest demographic shift in the last half century. This is a must read for anyone interested in the tangled intersection of family and public policy."—Alex Kotlowitz, author of There Are No Children Hither
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Table of Contents
Preface to the 2022 Edition
Introduction
ane. "Earlier We Had a Baby . . ."
2. "When I Got Pregnant . . ."
3. How Does the Dream Die?
four. What Marriage Ways
5. Labor of Dear
six. How Motherhood Changed My Life
Conclusion: Making Sense of Single Motherhood
Acknowledgements
Appendix A: City, Neighborhood, and Family unit Characteristics and Inquiry Methods
Appendix B: Interview Guide
Notes
References
Index
Source: https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520271463/promises-i-can-keep
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